Pitt women’s basketball coach Lance White encouraged by players’ confidence
Share this post:
Now in his fifth season as Pitt’s women’s basketball coach, Lance White said Tuesday that he sees more than hope building among his players. He sees confidence, which is an encouraging sign for a team that has lost 28 of its past 33 ACC games.
“They’re understanding the confidence that it takes,” he said, speaking on the ACC Network during the conference’s Media Days. “You can hope to get that shot or you can go create and take that shot.”
What may allow that confidence to grow is how White was able to dip into the NCAA transfer portal and add graduate senior point guard Channise Lewis (Maryland) and 6-foot-2 junior Gabby Hutcherson (Ohio State).
Clearly, the roster needed to be fortified after Pitt was 2-16 in the ACC last season, giving White a four-year conference record of 8-59 (32-79 overall).
“We’re finally older and wiser,” he said. “It’s the first time I’ve coached here at Pitt, we have the pieces in place. We can play the way I want to play. Now, we have a chance to go win.”
The biggest reason for White’s optimism is Lewis, a 5-foot-8 point guard, who has endured two serious knee injuries that allowed her to play in only nine games the past three seasons.
Prior to getting hurt, she was one of the top distributors in the Big Ten, averaging 4.7 assists in 2017-2018 (second among all NCAA freshmen) and 5.4 the following season. Lewis, a Miami native, caught White’s attention when she was in high school and he was an assistant at Florida State.
Now, she said, her knee is healed, and her presence will allow White to make a necessary adjustment to his lineup. Specifically, he will move Dayshanette Harris off the point to a position that may help broaden her game. Harris is special to White, not only because she is Pitt’s leading returning scorer (9.6 points per game), but she was his first recruit after he took the job in 2018.
“She’s never been a true point guard,” White said. “And, now, to be able to have a true point guard where (Harris) can be freed up to be a huge-impact wing player, that’s going to free her up in so many different areas.
“Now, seeing her go pressure the basketball and be a two-way player, I think it immediately helps us.”
White also hopes the Lewis-Harris combination will help win some of those close games that got away last winter during the season-ending 10-game losing streak. Half of those games were decided by single-digit margins.
“You have to win games in the last two minutes in the ACC,” he said.
Harris said the team is learning the true meaning of patience on offense.
“In previous years, we didn’t know what patience really was. We thought it meant slow,” she said. “Patience is getting the ball where it needs to be to make the next play. I think that comes with maturity.”
Another bit of optimism stems from having 70.1% of last season’s scoring production returning, third-best percentage in the ACC. Included among the players still with the program are Amber Brown (9.3), Liatu King (7.5), Destiny Strother (5.3) and Emy Hayford (4.2).
White calls Brown, a 6-foot junior forward, “the heart and soul of what we do.”
“She’s going to be your hardest worker.”
White added that 6-footer Maliyah Johnson, who averaged 1.8 rebounds in only 12.4 minutes per game as a freshman, has “a chance to be a really, really good ACC player. She has a chance to be special.”
The process of building an improved team received a boost this summer when White took the women to Italy, a get-to-know-you trip that included riding gondolas over the canals of Venice and standing in the middle of the Roman Coliseum.
The 10 bonus practices the trip allowed were important, too.
There appears to be more depth and an air of determination among players this season. Even the freshmen, including Marley Washenitz, Chartiers Valley graduate Aislin Malcolm and Avery Strickland have helped. White said Strickland wins every sprint at practice.
“Those young kids,” he said, “are pushing those older ones, (saying) `You better bring it every day or we’re going to beat you.’ It’s been the most competitive practices we’ve had since I’ve been at Pitt.”